"I know it could have been me," McDaniel said. "It would have been me."

The two women were subpoenaed to testify in Lowe's murder trial here. But their court appearances were canceled when Lowe decided to accept the maximum sentence, one he'd hammered out more than a year earlier in exchange for revealing the location of Bardwell's body.

Christine Chambers (left) and Hayley McDaniel took a selfie at the Collin County Courthouse this week. Both wore sunflower pins in honor of Jessie Bardwell, who was murdered by her boyfriend, Jason Lowe. Chambers and McDaniel dated Lowe before he dated Bardwell.

(Courtesy)

After Lowe's sentencing, Bardwell's parents addressed him during victim impact statements. When it came time for Gary Bardwell to talk about his only daughter, he invited McDaniel and Chambers to join him.

"I wanted to look him in the eye and see him one last time," Chambers said of Lowe.

An angry relationship

For McDaniel, 28, Lowe was the boy next door. His family's home backed up to hers in Ridgeland, Miss. They were in the same kindergarten class and attended the same gifted programs in school. As friends, they saw each other on and off over the years.

In 2014, Lowe reached out on Facebook. By then, McDaniel was living in Dallas. He was in Florida. Their relationship blossomed long-distance. That August, Lowe moved to Dallas to be with her. McDaniel quickly learned he had a temper.

"He would get really angry and really scary for no apparent reason," she said.

One time he grabbed McDaniel by the neck and pushed her onto the couch, she said. Another night, while they were in Uptown, she said, he pushed her to the ground and ran off with her keys and her cellphone.

One night that October, they were lying in bed. Lowe turned to the wall and started talking, getting louder and faster and angrier. He was mad at her, and she didn't know why. But she was scared enough to duck out in her pajamas and check into a hotel.

By March 2015, McDaniel wanted out. She remembers talking with him on the phone while she loaded her car, trying to gauge how long before he returned. He told her he was at a meeting and then planned to head out with friends.

Gary Bardwell (left) and his wife, Gina Capley, leave the Collin County Courthouse on Wednesday after Jason Lowe was sentenced to 50 years in prison for murdering their daughter, Jessie Bardwell.

(Jae S. Lee/Staff Photographer)

But that wasn't true. He was there, at the apartment complex, while they were on the phone.

"He said, 'I've been watching you. I've been sitting right here watching you pack up all your stuff,'" McDaniel recalled. "I just got in my car and left."

'A real smooth talker'

Chambers, 29, met Lowe in September 2014 when she got a job at a Dallas software company where he worked. They were both in sales and hung out as part of a larger group of friends.

The last week of May 2015, they went out for a drink one evening. Chambers remembers waking up hours later in Lowe's bed with no idea what happened. She'd never taken GHB, a common date rape drug, but believes she'd been drugged.

Lowe convinced her that he'd been drugged, too. He talked her out of calling police.

She was too shaken to go to work. She stayed at Lowe's place. That evening when she went back to her North Dallas apartment, she found it had been ransacked. He told her he didn't remember doing that.

Chambers also learned Lowe had used her phone to call her mother while she was blacked out. He was in hysterics, telling her mom he didn't know where Chambers was. When her mom called back, he wouldn't answer.

Jason Lowe received a new booking mug at the Collin County Detention Center after his conviction.

'I'm killing you right now'

A few nights later, she and Lowe got into an argument. He'd been texting McDaniel, saying he still loved her. Chambers confronted him. That's when he snapped, she said. She ran to the door, but he threw her across the living room. Then he cornered her in the bedroom.

The next thing she knew, Lowe was sitting with his knees on her stomach, his hands covering her mouth and nose. He pressed harder and harder. She was scratching him, trying to poke his eyes out, struggling to get free.

He told her: "I'm killing you right now."

Chambers said she got weaker. She remembers thinking, "I don't want his face to be the last thing that I see." She said she looked out the bedroom window and saw a sliver of moon.

Her last thought before passing out was that she hoped her sister didn't learn that day — May 29 — that she had died. It was her sister's birthday, and Chambers didn't want to ruin it.

When Chambers woke up, she ran out the door barefoot and headed to the nearby 7-Eleven to call 911. Dallas police arrested Lowe on a charge of assault family violence. He spent about two weeks in jail and lost his sales job.

"I'll never understand how I'm still here," Chambers said.

Jessie Bardwell was killed last year by her boyfriend, Jason Lowe.

(Courtesy)

She was too scared to follow through with the criminal charges. Nearly a year later, she saw on the news that Lowe had been arrested and his girlfriend was missing.

Empowered and liberated

For months, Chambers had been gearing up to testify. Too many memories mirrored the snippets she learned about Jessie Bardwell: the jealousy, the GHB, the pretense with her mother that she'd gone missing.

Chambers wanted people to know what Lowe was really like. McDaniel felt the same way.

Although Jessie Bardwell was from Mississippi like McDaniel and Lowe, McDaniel didn't know her very well. And Chambers never knew her. But both women bonded with Bardwell's father, whom they met for the first time during the trial.

Gary Bardwell, father of Jessie Bardwell, is overcome with emotion during the prosecution's closing statements during Jason Lowe's murder trial at the Collin County Courthouse in McKinney on Sept. 19, 2017.